Past the dated name and the tacky 3-D effect toggle is a pretty fun, albeit kinda frustrating, ride or die racer. The control of your car and its behavior towards curves and other cars are surprisingly robust. There's an engaging racing meta to be had here, but it gets unfortunately bogged down by a punishing lack of continues. Even with modern day save states, it becomes clear that simulating a 3D racer on an 8-bit gadget is bound to have some shortcomings - namely cheap car placements manifesting outta nowhere.

I may not dig the game structurally, but I'm still glad I gave it a shot. More than anything, I'm impressed at how convincing this game's premise is. An early 8-bit game giving me the adrenaline of a daredevil drive - with gorgeous winding scenery and optional radio tunes - is something special you gotta experience at least once, even if you struggle to finish it.

I can't believe it's not OutRun!

A simple time-attack racing game by Square in which you must race from Point-A to Point-B as fast as possible while avoiding the traffic. You need to complete all 8 race course to finish the game. Just choose between a red sports car or an open-wheel car (either, really, they both perform the same), select one of the three banger songs in-game (by Nobuo Uematsu!), and you're all set!

As mentioned, the game was clearly inspired by Sega's OutRun. You need to reach the finish line within the given time limit, and you can extend the time by crossing 3 checkpoints in each course. It's not that easy, tho, as the timer in this game is very strict, and every second counts. If you crash, the car resets by aligning itself back at the center of the road very slowly, wasting precious seconds and it will cause you frustration.

Don't worry, tho! Your car has a neat feature to make it go faster: Unlimited nitro boosts! By holding down the Up button while moving your car it will use the nitro boosts, accelerating to top speed very fast as long as the Up button is held down, but it comes with danger. Using it will make your car suffer from understeering and less reactive to weaving through traffic. So in a way it has some strategy involved on when and where to use it.

Another neat feature is that when the timer runs out your car will still continue to glide a great distance until it comes to a full stop. This is a game changer as it can save your race if you let your car glide to the next checkpoint just within your reach, extending your time and have another chance to finish the course.

All in all, it's a fun racing game. Try Rad Racer when you get the chance. Good for 30 minutes of fun!

Um clássico jogo de corrida contra o tempo que NÃO se chama Corredor Vermelho, embora um certo filme diga o contrário.
Se você curte Out Run no Mega, você vai gostar deste também. Nunca cheguei a ver o fim desse jogo por ser bastante desafiador, mas o que joguei foi bem divertido. Pavimentou o caminho para muitos jogos de corrida futuros, tem suporte 3D se apertar Select e tem até botão de turbo, se segurar para cima quando na velocidade máxima.

Ah, e não tente jogar com a Power Glove também... ela não é muito boa

As mentioned previously in my King’s Knight review, the company Squaresoft, or more commonly known as Square, didn’t quite become a household name in the video game market until they released the original Final Fantasy back in 1987, which prompted them to primarily develop RPGs all the way to this day. It’s no secret as to why they would go that route, given how it is the way their company was saved from going bankrupt back in the day. However, that isn’t to say that a good number of their titles before the original Final Fantasy didn’t have some kind of notoriety, as there are several of their earliest titles that are still memorable from their catalog, for several reasons, such as The 3-D Adventures of Lode Runner and, again, King’s Knight. But, out of all their earliest titles, there was one game that was more well known then all of the others, so much so to where it was featured in plenty of other products, both games and otherwise. That game would be the original Rad Racer.

Before playing it, I had very little experience with Rad Racer, only having playing the challenge portion of the game that was available to play in the Nintendo World Championship 1990 game, and having seen it primarily through the movie The Wizard. While that movie was a hot pile of garbage, it did show off several titles that I hadn’t played before that looked interesting, including Rad Racer, so, after a mere 8 months of waiting (the time between discovery and play is getting longer with each of these games, I swear), I decided to check it out, and you know what, I wish I had checked out the game sooner. For being an NES racer, it is pretty great, and while it doesn’t offer too much in the gameplay department, it does provide enough challenge and speed to where that didn’t matter too much to me.

The graphics are very impressive, not only providing a 3D-like aspect that is pretty innovative for the time, but it also provides the sense of speed that is absolutely pivotal for this type of game, with you feeling like you are going extremely fast as you see all the signs and lines on the side of the road fly past you, the music is good, providing the fast-paced feel a game like this should, but a lot of the tracks do sound extremely similar, so it isn’t something I would go out of my way to listen to again, the control is pretty basic for a racing game, only allowing for acceleration, braking, and turning, but that is enough to use for this game, and trust me, you will need to master all these to get ahead, and the gameplay is… exactly what you would expect, but that doesn’t make the game bad whatsoever.

The game is your typical racing game, where you take control of one of two cars that are basically the exact same thing, take on a set of eight tracks around the world, race your way to the end of the goal before the timer runs out, make sure to turn and brake when it is absolutely necessary so that you don’t fall behind or end up crashing, and bump against plenty of fellow racers that will try to stop you in your tracks so that you can’t make it. And that is pretty much it. The game itself isn’t really about coming in first place, but more so just making it so that you can reach the end of the track, which is enough to get you going, but there isn’t anything else that you could latch onto and have fun with, which may be a disappointment for some.

As for me, I had a really good time with it. This game may not be as creative or chaotic as a game like R.C. Pro Am for the same system, but it does provide a sense of speed that that game wishes it could even come close to achieving, and there are plenty of different environments that you can race through, making sure you see something new for every track. It does feel extremely satisfying to race through these tracks and beat em, making sure that you don’t bump into any of these other racers on the track, or at least not enough to where you can get far behind enough, as well as making sure to not crash to lose your progress. It may not be much at all for those who aren’t that into racing games, but it is a good amount of fun for the short time you get with it.

However, of course, it isn’t perfect. Despite the fact that the game isn’t that long at all, I do feel like it kind of drags on after a while. I dunno, I just feel like 8 tracks is a little much for this kind of game, especially with how hard it already is from the start if you aren’t prepared for it. And speaking of which, this is what I would like to call a “perfectionist” game, where in order to succeed in any of the races, you have to be a damn near PERFECT racer. Sure, you can bump into plenty of the cars and have plenty of time to still make it to each respective checkpoint and goal, even if you do run out of time, but if you crash at all in any of these tracks, it is pretty much guaranteed that you will lose, which does suck, and it does force you to get extremely good, but at the same time, I wish there was just a liiiiitle bit of mercy given, like allowing the player to crash like once or twice, and still have enough time to reach a checkpoint or goal. Then again, maybe that is just me.

Overall, despite how difficult it can be, and how it doesn’t have much personality when compared to other racers, I would still say that Rad Racer is a pretty great time, and I would go as far to say it is probably the best racing game on the NES if you are playing for pure speed. I would definitely recommend it for fans of racing games, especially those that were released back in this era, but for others, I would say just give it a shot, see if you like it, and if not, move onto something else. It’s not really something you need to jump into immediately either. I mean, unless you are pulled in by the 3D mode the game has, as well as being able to play it with the Power Glove……….. you know, if you hate yourself that much.

Game #357

If you make any racer that plays like Outrun, you have my curiosity, but, if you give me a red Ferrari and the ability to choose my track on the radio, then you have my attention.

While it definitely takes heavy inspiration from Outrun, Rad Racer chooses to eschew the choose-your-route structure for a traditional checkpointed campaign with 8 courses. And, while I prefer that choice, many of these courses are absolutely stunning, especially Seaway in Typhoon, San Francisco Highway, and Lisa Angeles Night Way. Add on 3 great radio tracks to choose from, difficult but fair check pointing, and unnecessarily aggressive drivers, and you’ve got a game that stands on its own despite its inspirations being as clear as a passing breeze. Overall, Rad Racer is easily one of my favorite games I’ve played on the NES.

In my review of 3-D WorldRunner (1987), I mentioned the early situation of Square and how this game was part of Nasir Gebelli's legacy in the studio. I won't go over it again: suffice it to say that Rad Racer was the second title that allowed the studio to test Gebelli's skills. Directly inspired by Mach Rider (1985), it is much more ambitious in its use of 3D compared to 3-D WorldRunner, notably because the curves forced Gebelli to think about the implementation of parallax.

The game puts you in control of a car – either a Ferrari 328 GTB or a F1 car. As in Mach Rider, the goal is to reach the finish line before the timer runs out: crossing checkpoints adds time to the counter. The 'game over' only occurs at the end of the timer, insofar as a collision will send our vehicle into the air, but it is always possible to resume the race, albeit slowed by the accident. Beyond that, the gameplay is very formulaic: the player has to accelerate, use their turbo and slow down to take the curves without losing time and crashing into other vehicles – which have no aggressive intent, unlike Mach Rider. In some ways, the formula works better: it's more fun to concentrate solely on driving, while enjoying the rather charming scenery and the radio's music tracks, which can be changed or turned off as desired. It's easy to see why the title was a technical challenge for Square: parallax is much more demanding for the NES, which doesn't make it any easier to create stereoscopic 3D – for 3-D WorldRunner, the red and blue views were superimposed: here, the solution was to quickly flicker the red view with the blue view to create the illusion of continuity. The result is rather convincing and makes the title interesting in 3D, even if it remains a curiosity.

Rad Racer thus appears as a successful title, which prefigures Square's turn with Final Fantasy (1987): indeed, the series gradually borrowed its technical ideas. One could regret, as much as it is pleasant, that the game is less varied than Mach Rider. There is neither the level editor nor the different game modes. These absences are not critical, but they illustrate the ancillary aspect of Rad Racer, a sort of springboard for the studio's other projects.